Turn in your old cellphone and raise needed funds for national bone marrow bank

Project initiated by the father of Amit Kadosh, a girl who recuperated from leukemia after undergoing a bone-marrow transplant.

By JUDY SIEGEL
Good samaritans drop their old cellphones in a collection box at United Mizrahi Bank. (photo credit: Courtesy)
Good samaritans drop their old cellphones in a collection box at United Mizrahi Bank.
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Anyone with an old, disused cellphone can make good use of it instead of throwing it into the garbage: Donate it to the Ezer Mizion National Bone Marrow Bank and the proceeds will go to the lifesaving organization.
Every bank branch of United Mizrahi Bank will accept the phone in a project initiated by the father of Amit Kadosh, a girl who recuperated from leukemia after undergoing a bone-marrow transplant.
Starting from this week and through the end of January, the bank branches and all of its other units around the country will collect old cellphones. Ezer Mizion, the International Bone Marrow Donor registry, will pay for cellphones that are still usable, depending on the model and condition.
Yuval Kadosh, Amit’s father, launched the well-publicized campaign for bone marrow testing and donations some time ago to save his daughters life.
Besides this good deed to get bone-marrow samples and contributions to process them, the campaign will also benefit the environment by putting the old phones to good use instead of them being buried at garbage dumps.
United Mizrahi Bank deputy director- general Rita Rubinstein said: “As a bank that lives in the community and maintains ties with it, it’s natural that we ask all the branches to join this significant and special campaign that will help save lives and protect the environment. We call on our customers and the general public to come in large numbers and bring in their old cell phones.”
Dr. Bracha Zisser, the bone marrow bank’s director, said, “Every additional bone marrow sample in the databank has the potential to save lives, and every monetary donation can make the lifesaving possible. In the name of all cancer patients and their families, I thank [United Mizrahi Bank] and all the donors.”
The bone marrow databank was established in 1998 and has some 700,000 potential donors who were tested and listed.
It is the largest Jewish and Israeli bone marrow bank anywhere and the fourth-largest bone marrow databank in the world. So far, the lives of 1,400 cancer patients have been saved due to the bone-marrow transplants made possible by the facility.